I was always able to hear well. My ears worked fine (my eyes on the other hand, well, I've always been pretty much blind). I actually thought my hearing was one of my better senses...until chemotherapy.
Now, I'm not an oncologist so I may have some details of this post wrong. Please don't think I know everything about Neuroblastoma treatment (truth is, I don't). I only know my case.
During my treatments, I was given extremely high doses of a chemotherapy drug called cisplatin. Little did I know at the beginning of treatments that this drug would cause my inner ear to create 24/7 constant ringing. You know when you go to a concert and you're standing close to a speaker and you get the buzzing and ringing in your head for a few hours or days? I have that ringing constantly--for almost three years now. That is the best way I know how to describe it (or a table-saw!). This ringing is called tinnitus and although it is "invisible" to others, it is extremely debilitating.
Along with my tinnitus, I developed hearing loss from the cisplatin. Not everyone that has cisplatin develops a hearing impairment, but, of course, I had to be one of the people who did!
For several months during my treatments, my tinnitus and hearing loss caused me to become extremely depressed. I would be in a hospital bed for weeks at a time and cry every single night because of the noise in my head/ears that just would not go away. It caused me to not be able to sleep which created even more depression and it was an endless cycle.
I was often frustrated because of having to constantly ask people to repeat themselves when they would talk and would fake a laugh or force a smile when someone would tell me that I said "what?" too much. But, the truth of the matter was that I was irritated more because I honestly could not hear them over the ringing!
The depression would, and still does to this day, sink in when people become "annoyed" when I ask them to repeat themselves. If someone was in a wheelchair and asked for help, people wouldn't think twice about helping them. So, just because a hearing disability isn't visible, doesn't mean you should make a person feel like an annoyance.
To this day, I brush it off. I'm the "deaf" friend who isn't quite deaf enough to be considered completely "disabled", but I'm not "hearing" enough to be considered "normal." So, where does this put people like me? We're in the middle. And that's okay. It's okay to be different whether it's because of a physical cause like mine or something else!
Be proud of who you are and what you've overcome. Be proud that you are unique and you have so much to offer the world. Own your tinnitus, whatever your "tinnitus" might be.
